Overview of Home Automation Technology
In this report, it will be discussed about the home automations technology and the impact of this innovation upon the market, competitors and other stakeholders. First of all, the concept of home automation is unique in itself where the users have the access of controlling their home appliances remotely. In accordance with the statistics, the impact of the home automation technology is expected to gain a massive growth in the market. This project will also increase the sales of other electronic devices which is also a plus point of this.
Before getting into further considerations of this project, it is needed to state what can be offered through the home automation. Basically, it can be used for two purposes. The first one is to use for the security purposes such as automated locked door and windows, CCTV cameras etc. The other purpose is to control several electronic objects like a smart TV, audio system etc. In present days, where people are surrounded by technologies, there is no point to refuse further assistance of it. Apart from that, as the main purpose of technological innovation is to make the workflow of the human easier, In the current scenario, this innovation is one of those fewer innovation which serves its purpose better than others.
This report is being created with a purpose to evaluate an innovation plan for the project SmartHub Home Automation system. The management of this project has been aimed to complete this project with minimal production cost, and provide the users a smooth and cheaper experience about the home automation. Apart from this, the management has also set out certain goals for their upcoming financial activities. As there are two entities engaged in this project simultaneously, it is the goal of the company to achieve the desired sales, increase its market and promote about the companies (Boyle 2017).
In order to evaluate the overview of the project, it is needed to go through the SWOT analysis of the entity (Conforto et al. 2018). The analysis for this project is given below:
Strengths
- Having a skilled and experienced team for the project.
- The production cost of the project is much lower.
- The goal of this project is to provide Simple and easy to use interface to the users.
- Due to the low production cost, the product can be provided in a cheaper price, which can provide the project a competitive advantage.
Weaknesses
- The time limit of the project is very short, as the deadline of the commercialisation of the product has been decided.
- The marketing strategy of the team is not well established and developed in comparison with its key competitors.
- Due to the lower budget, the workspace and the appliances of the company provided for the project is also limited.
- Other important support such as lack of expensive technologies or faster Wi-Fi can also hamper the work force.
Opportunity
- It can gain enough consumers attraction due to its lower price.
- This automation has its own scope to use in other industries like health care, small scale industries etc.
- The price can be adjusted in future and the marketing can be done online.
Threat
- The market is not yet totally prepared for this innovation.
- The lack of knowledge or trust of the customer regarding this company can make it harder to make a impact on the market.
- The competitors can also lower their prices thus the company might lose their advantages.
- Lack of supported device can also be a minus point of this project.
The home automation industry has faced a massive growth in the last decade. Thousands of new entities have emerged in the meantime. Some backed off; some are still doing business in the industry. By analysing the overall performance, the giant in electronics industry Google has managed to gain the most amount of business in this sector (Joslin and Müller 2015). The product of Google that is named as Google home had managed to gain total sales of 6.8 million till the mid season of 2018. But in terms of higher sales limit, Amazon has left Google behind. Their product named Amazon Echo was sold a record amount of 11 million unit in the financial year of 2017 (Kerzner 2018).
As both of these products are cheap in comparison to their goodwill, it will be very hard for SmartHub to convince the customers towards their product. As it is stated earlier, These companies are totally established in this industry, and the products which are bring provided by them are really high end in terms of specifications and the prices of these products are also comparatively in comparison with the specs and the goodwill of the company. Thus, a trust factors will burden the business of SmartHub. In order to overcome this problem, the company really need to work on their marketing segment. Because, if the marketing of the product is not good enough, there is a huge chance that the company might face a loss (Larson and Gray 2015).
Two Purposes of Home Automation
In one word, there is no limit for the digital market. Nowadays, when almost everyone regardless of their age can easily access technology and internet, and as the number of total internet users is booming day by day, it can be said that the digital market all over the world is transforming rapidly day by day (Leach 2014). With this, the way of distribution and exchange of the information is going through a revolutionary progress. The product (only if it is an intangible asset) can be sent from one part of the world to another without any disturbance and the payments can also be made virtually. These generate more scopes to the entities that want to sell something or have some service to offer. Now days, when almost everyone is on internet, it has also been easier to connect with each other and this can make the marketing of the product easier (Martinelli and Milosevic 2016).
Due to the constant growth of the internet, the market of home automation has been expanded in the last few years. Especially in case of Internet of Things, the market growth of this sector was noticeably huge. In the statistics of the past few years, it can be seen that, there has been a huge increase in the amount of total sold devices in the last 5 years. In terms of shipment of the smart home devices abroad, the total number of sold unit is also being increased year by year (Sánchez 2015). Thus, it can be said by considering the given estimates, the digital market of the home automation has a huge potentiality. In order to fully utilise this, the company SmartHub needs to improve or develop their marketing plan in order to reach the largest possible people worldwide who can be their potential customer in order to establish a sustainable sales (Svejvig and Andersen 2015).
Though this is a comparatively lower budgeted project, it is needed to get some investors and partners in order to accommodate the incurred cost of this project. In this project too, there are certain investors and partners who are willing to invest in this project. Apart from that, there are other potentialities of this project from which, the management team gain some other local as well as international partners. As the scale of the market for this project has a huge limit, the possibilities of this project is also immense in accordance with it (Todorovi? et al. 2015). As far as the primary investor of this project is concerned, there are two major companies which have tied up with this project in order to serve their financial purpose. First of all, it is required to mention about the Smart Home Solutions which provides the accessories and the smart devices. Apart from that, the Home Automation Co. which also provides smart devices has invested in this project. Both of these companies are working in this field for past several years and thus, managed to get some reputation by delivering quality products in an affordable price. These companies have started to invest in this venture together as this project will not only increase their profitability, but also increase the sales of the produced items. As both of these companies are located in Australia, the communication between these companies will be easier which will also be helpful for SmartHub project (Turner 2016).
Innovation Plan for SmartHub Home Automation System
Apart from this, the project can be associated with other similar companies which are engaged in similar production which will help the companies to get the necessary items in a lower price and will also help to manage further capital. The management of this project can tie up with several companies as their social media and marketing partner and also the security partner of this project which will be helpful for both of the investor and the investee.
Now days, when the digital market is increasing more and more, it is important to keep the production of the company safe from any kind of theft and piracy which can be devastating for the company. For the companies who deal with the intellectual property, it is important for them to make a strategy to keep their produced item protected from the other competitor and digital thieves from being the item stolen or being used as a disadvantage against them. There are several methods to secure these intellectual properties for the companies such as copyright, patents etc (Walker 2015).
In this case, SmartHub should consider both copyright and patents for this project. As this project is based on an application, the management should issue a copyright policy in order to prevent any kind of breaching or piracy or for stopping its competitors to use their research data against them. Apart from it, the company should also take the patent right of the smart devices in order to gain the overall control over the production and selling of these devices by themselves. These will generate an additional advantage to the production and sales of the company if they preserve the overall right over their project.
As it is mentioned above, in the era of digital marketing, where all the data is available to the people worldwide, it is required to protect the production of a company by the means of legislation. This will enable the company to restrict the production and sales of these items without their knowledge and permission. These will prevent other companies to steal their data and become a new competitor in the market by based on their research and hard work, as well as some other dishonest companies can pirate the data and sale them without their knowledge. Thus, in order to be secured from both of these consequences, the company needs to imply these IP strategies so that the security of the intellectual property of the company cannot be hampered due to their financial activities during the commercialisation of the products.
For starting any project, it is required to estimate the overall cost that is required for finishing the project. These costs are needed to be measured by taking the reference of historical transactions and based on the industry standard. In this project, the total cost of meeting with the client is being regarded as $750 by considering the gathering, discussion about design and conduct, analysis of the final result and the required documentations. For making the decisions about the designing, the management has estimated a total cost of $360 for design plan, $150 for the discussion of the programming language, $360 for deciding the ISP provider for the project. Apart from this, there are other expenses like discussion about the design of microcontroller, automated devices, circuitry, prototype and the mobile application. As a whole, the total cost that is estimated for designing is calculated as $7140. Apart from that, the company has also provisioned a total amount of $150 for the changes made in the design by the demand of the client. The costing department of the company is also allocated an amount for the code revision and documentation for $300. The cost allocated to testing and changes are being considered as $954.1. The rollout and advertisement cost of the company has been estimated as $441.5. As a whole, the total cost of the project is estimated as $9735.6.
SWOT Analysis of the Project
As the company has decided to sell the product thorough digital market, it can be assumed that the company is going to have both local and international market. As in Australia, the market for the home automation is growing among the people as the new innovation of technologies is capturing the market. As far as the global market is concerned, the market is booming by the increasing usage of Internet of Things. Thus as the growing market of this technology of home automation is concerned, it can be said that the market for this project is contained of some heavy weight competitors, but the market itself can offer a lot of opportunity to the project.
As the purpose of both of the major companies are concerned, along with making extra profits from this project, the companies can also increase the amount of total sales as their products can also be integrated in the production. Any subsidiary companies or ventures which deal with similar manufacturing can also be benefited from the project. As the profitability of the consumers is concerned, the project can provide an extra assurance for an easier and more secure life to them. Thus, the project can prove itself valuable from several aspects.
As the project is still in the development stage, it is advised to put some extra effort in the marketing of the product. As it is stated above, this project has two heavy weight competitors which are operating in this industry for past several years and manage to capture the majority of the consumer. In this situation, it will be hard to gain the trust of the consumers for a new company if the marketing strategy for this project is not properly implemented.
Conclusion
From the given report, it can be concluded that the project has its own potentiality and scope to grow and provide a financially successful business to the company. There are certain risks that can hamper the growth of the business, but by implementing the proper strategy and improvement policies by the management, these problems can be overcome. The main threat for the growth of this project is its well-established competitors and the lack of goodwill of the company. Thus, the proper marketing strategy for sales is equally important as the production of item for the company. In order to make more successful business, it can be advised to the management of the company to consider some other circumstances which have been evaluated through this report.
References:
Boyle, G., 2017. Design project management. Routledge.
Conforto, E.C., Salum, F., Amaral, D.C., da Silva, S.L. and de Almeida, L.F.M., 2014. Can agile project management be adopted by industries other than software development?. Project Management Journal, 45(3), pp.21-34.
Joslin, R. and Müller, R., 2015. Relationships between a project management methodology and project success in different project governance contexts. International Journal of Project Management, 33(6), pp.1377-1392.
Kerzner, H., 2018. Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John Wiley & Sons.
Larson, E.W. and Gray, C.F., 2015. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: PMBOK (®) Guide. Project Management Institute.
Leach, L.P., 2014. Critical chain project management. Artech House.
Martinelli, R.J. and Milosevic, D.Z., 2016. Project management toolbox: tools and techniques for the practicing project manager. John Wiley & Sons.
Sánchez, M.A., 2015. Integrating sustainability issues into project management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 96, pp.319-330.
Svejvig, P. and Andersen, P., 2015. Rethinking project management: A structured literature review with a critical look at the brave new world. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), pp.278-290.
Todorovi?, M.L., Petrovi?, D.?., Mihi?, M.M., Obradovi?, V.L. and Bushuyev, S.D., 2015. Project success analysis framework: A knowledge-based approach in project management. International Journal of Project Management, 33(4), pp.772-783.
Turner, R., 2016. Gower handbook of project management. Routledge.
Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.
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